Maschen Marshalling Yard

Maschen Marshalling Yard
Maschen Rbf - the north-south system
Other names	Maschen Rangierbahnhof
Location	Seevetal Maschen, Lower Saxony Germany
Coordinates	53°24′17″N 10°03′23″E / 53.40472°N 10.05639°E / 53.40472; 10.05639Coordinates: 53°24′17″N 10°03′23″E / 53.40472°N 10.05639°E / 53.40472; 10.05639
Other information
Station code	AM

Maschen Marshalling Yard (German: Maschen Rangierbahnhof, abbreviated to Maschen Rbf or AM in the official railway directory) near Maschen south of Hamburg on the Hanover–Hamburg railway is the largest marshalling yard in Europe, its size only being exceeded worldwide by the Bailey Yard in the US state of Nebraska.

The marshalling yard takes up an area of 280 hectares, has a length of 7,000 metres and a maximum width of 700 metres. When it opened it had a total track length of 300 kilometres and there were six signal boxes, 825 sets of points, 100 home, 115 distant and 688 shunting signals. As a two-sided shunting facility, Maschen has two train formation yards. The north-south system has a set of 48 departure sidings and a set of 16 reception sidings; the south-north system consists of a set of 64 departure sidings and a set of 17 reception sidings. Both systems are supplemented by storage and marshalling sidings. In addition, there is an eight-road main repair shop for the repair of goods wagons and an engine shed for the maintenance of electric and diesel-driven goods train locomotives with a two-road inspection hall and numerous open-air storage sidings. Two signal boxes are responsible for the yard, one for each system. Separate signal boxes that had been built for the marshalling sidings were closed again in 1983.

In 2002 a central relief yard (Dispostelle) replaced the previous two yards—one for each direction. In 2004 the goods wagon repair shop was upgraded into a combined shop (Kombiwerk), and is now responsible for the maintenance of locomotives as well as wagons.